…ts the visual vocabulary of science, which results in work placed in vitrines or squares. That resonated with me and helped me realize that I don’t want to reproduce the visual language of science and containment in my own work. This well-known critic made this observation, and, without disagreeing with it, I felt clear that it wasn’t the thing I was going to do. A set of human hands inserts a mud hand into plastic wrapping. Kiyan Williams on sit…

…politics, life and art between Gustave Flaubert and the cross-dressing proto-feminist George Sand. Kimberly King and Michael Ray Wisely play the authors in this new production. It’s not really a romantic tale. Sand was 20 years older, and they never met. But director Joy Carlin told me audiences are loving it. “It seems to pack a wallop, it’s just people reading letters, but people seem to get very emotional over it.” Details here. Robert Hawkin…

…Pollock’s ‘Lucifer’ is something that people come to see. It previously hung over Putter’s bed, before moving to the dining room and before coming here.” “There’s an incredible Mark Rothko (‘Pink and White Over Red’) that’s just beautiful — a seductive red painting.” “Robert Irwin’s untitled disk is capturing people’s attention. There’s this shadow quality — he was very interested in the transience of time and light. Hopefully you get lost in it…

…f World War II has hung in a private home in an affluent San Francisco suburb — first in a child’s bedroom and then over a dining room credenza. Jackson Pollock’s “Lucifer” (1947) is the canvas in which the artist’s tentative experiments with a revolutionary new way of painting first took flight. Now the painting is going public. “Lucifer” is the stellar work in the Anderson Collection, an impressive new…

…celestial cloud formation. “It simplified it in interesting ways,” Red Star said. “The [Gast] painting is so cut and clear, you see all the fine details, and then everything gets muddled and mushed together in this paint-by-number.” The end result was digitized and enlarged into a mural-sized print, now installed in a gallery coated with Red Star’s signature astroturf. An important component to Red Star’s exhibition is how Stanford is a product o…

…w) reservation in Montana. With historical research, Stanford student collaborations, large-scale installations, and images of sovereignty, Red Star asks viewers to grapple with the layered complexity of American history. On view on the first floor of the museum through Aug. 28, the exhibition is informed by Red Star’s cultural heritage and engagement with many forms of creative expression. She addresses the racism, displacement, and culture surr…

…have spent hours looking at them. The Pollock, Lucifer, is from 1947. It stands between two worlds, like Heaven and Hell itself, one in which painting was composed and paintbrushes moved the paint in recognizable fashion. Pollock’s drips obliterated all that. Yet this painting speaks to a fierce compositional control even as the paint fell to the canvas. There are two Rothkos, Pink and White over Red, from 1957 and Untitled (Black on Gray) from…

…ause I was used to seeing art in generously sized museums—and still am—the intimate, close-quarters abundance of the Andersons’ home struck me then as a higher-end form of pack-rattery. Ever since, I’ve wondered what it would be like to live day in, day out with a Rothko. I still do; really, I can’t imagine a more sublime aesthetic experience. (If anyone reading this has ever owned a Rothko and gotten sick of it, please don’t tell me.) The new tw…

…ford, Kim Beil, the micro-video series “Up Close: One Painting Tours with Artists” focuses on a single object in the Anderson Collection, sparking dialogue with a guest artist. This project is made possible by a grant from Stanford Arts and the Anderson Collection at Stanford University. Artist Rebekah Goldstein explores Richard Diebenkorn’s Ocean Park #60 Rebekah Goldstein is a San Francisco-based painter. Click here to explore her work. Foll…

…ms — in other words, from accurate depictions of real objects to compositions based entirely on geometric shapes and patterns. In this piece, Diebenkorn plays with composition, lines and color. The artist is known for decomposing scenes from life into conglomerates of lines and shapes, as he does in “Ocean Park #60.” Diebenkorn uses a subdued, cool color palette, alluding to the ocean, though he adds depth to his composition by superimposing red…

…and exercise their appreciation for Antarctica through arts. Lita Albuquerque’s work “combines art with science and human connection with cosmos.” The project took three years to fulfil, from the ideation stage through to installation. The team were allowed to keep the artwork on display on site for a mere 3 weeks on condition of being actively documented throughout this time. Lita Albuquerque and Simon Balm inside Stellar Axis, Antarctica…